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OPINION

Our view: Hold U.S. Sugar to its promises

Malcom Wade, senior vice president of Sugar Operations at U.S. Sugar Corp., reacts while talking about suggestions of selling off property options for possible Lake Okeechobee discharges during the Water Resources Advisory Commission meeting discussing the state of Lake Okeechobee, The St. Lucie Estuary and the Indian River Lagoon in the Frances Langford Center at Indian RiverSide Park in Jensen Beach on Aug. 8, 2013.(Photo: ERIC HASERT, TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)Buy Photo

That was the answer our Editorial Board got, without hesitation, from a U.S. Sugar Corp. executive when we posed this question:

Will you meet with local leaders and environmentalists to identify a mutually agreeable solution to permanently stop discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie River?

“I’d be more than willing to sit down with whoever it is to engage in those discussions as to what it is we ought to be doing and why,” said Malcolm “Bubba” Wade, the Clewiston-based sugar company’s senior vice president for corporate strategy and business development, during a meeting Wednesday with Treasure Coast Newspapers’ Editorial Board.

Let’s hold him to it.

We’re not looking for a temporary fix. We need a lasting remedy that will shut the flood gates that have been sending fouled water into our estuary for more than eight decades.

Like it or not, U.S. Sugar, one of the two largest landowners in the Everglades Agricultural Area, must be a party to the solution.

We know it’s tempting to dismiss Wade’s comments as disingenuous.

This is the same U.S. Sugar that in 2008 heralded the state’s purchase of the company’s property south of Lake Okeechobee as “a monumental opportunity to save the Everglades” — then did an about-face and opposed the deal.

This is the same U.S. Sugar that is waging an aggressive public relations campaign, including ads in Treasure Coast Newspapers, to deflect the perception that it is standing in the way of restoration efforts.

Meanwhile, more than 116 billion gallons of lake water have entered the St. Lucie River so far this year — imperiling the estuary by decreasing salinity and delivering nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment.

The discharges continue even as toxic algae was confirmed this month in Lake Okeechobee. Algae that appeared this week in the St. Lucie River, close to Stuart, is being tested for toxicity.

And the rainy season has just begun.

Eight decades is long enough.

We must seize this moment.

Take Wade up on his commitment to begin talks with local leaders and environmentalists to find a way to end the discharges.

We recommend the University of Florida’s Water Institute lead the effort. It is familiar with the problems, having completed a report commissioned by the Florida Senate in 2015.

The report identified the need for “enormous increases in storage and treatment of water both north and south of the lake.”

The next step is to identify where that land should be and how it will work.

Florida has the money: More than 75 percent of voters approved Amendment 1 in 2014 to buy land for restoration.

During our meeting with him Wednesday, Wade cast doubt on whether buying land south of Lake Okeechobee is a technically feasible way to stop the discharges.

Yet more than 200 scientists who have worked in the Everglades — including those from the Everglades Foundation, the National Park Service and many universities — have signed their names to a petition that calls for “increased storage and treatment of freshwater south of Lake Okeechobee, and additional flow from the lake southward” to restore the Everglades, Florida Bay and the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries.

The UF Water Institute can sort out these differences of opinion. It can convene Treasure Coast leaders and environmentalists with U.S. Sugar. Florida Crystals, the other large landowner in the Everglades Agricultural Area, also must be at the table.

And soon-to-be state Senate President Joe Negron can make it happen. Negron commissioned the original UF water study in 2014.